Matthew B. Miles

Drawing Valid Meaning from Qualitative Data: Toward a Shared Craft

past year has contained a good deal of impassioned argument at the paradigmatic level (Eisner, 1983; Phillips, 1983; Smith, 1983b; Tuthill & Ashton, 1983). The debate turns around the claim that epistemologies and procedures such as logical empiricism, scientism, the hypothetico-deductive method, realism, experimentalism, and instrumentalism all go together and are inherently different from-in fact, incompatible with--contrasting epistemologies and procedures of phenomenology, hermeneutics, critical theory, verstehen approaches, and artistic modes of knowing. It is argued (e.g., Norris, 1983, Smith, 1983b), that the quantitative and interpretive perspectives are irreconcilable; that claims of their complementary characteristics are unfounded; and that blending the two approaches will result in equivocal conclusions. This is a nontrivial battle, because it challenges the very foundations of the research enterprise, and particularly any given empirical study. But we are inclined to leave the battle to others, for several reasons. First, we continue to need working canons and procedures to judge the validity and usefulness of research in progress. Second, no one reasonably expects the dispute to be settled in any satisfactory way because it has come to rest on crystallized stances, each with its faithful, eager pack of recently-socialized disciples. Finally, if one looks carefully at the research actually conducted in the name of one or another epistemology, it seems that few working researchers are not blending the two perspectives.

Improving the urban high school : what works and why

Part 1 Reforming the urban high school a look at the territory making change happen leading and managing reforming the big-city high school. Part 2 Case studies on the move two success stories struggling and improving limited success. Part 3 Leadership and management - what makes for success? in the beginning planning improvement efforts vision building in school reform getting and managing resources for change the change process day to day leading and managing change - what does it take?.

Managing Reform: Lessons from Urban High Schools

ABSTRACT American high schools present an extremely difficult, nearly intractable setting for serious educational reform efforts. Yet such efforts can succeed. This article reports results from a survey of 179 urban comprehensive high schools that were successfully implementing change programs based on effective schools principles. All schools encountered problems of implementation. Larger‐scale, instructionally‐oriented, and longer‐lasting programs induced more problems. Problems were only moderated, not eliminated, by good‐quality planning. Given the problem‐richness of change efforts, the major determinant of successful implementation was good problem‐coping. It was made more likely by the presence of consensus (shared vision), support of key stakeholders in and out of the school, planning quality, external assistance, and administrative time spent. Case studies showed that the presence of an empowered change management group aided all these critical factors. Schools with the most impact (defined as st...

The Outcomes of School Improvement

Now we begin the end of our story. What were the ultimate outcomes of the school improvement projects that we have been studying? And what might explain the degree to which a site achieved stronger or weaker outcomes? In this section, we review the six outcomes that we analyzed and explain how the sites fared on them. Then we look at a series of “predictors”— factors in the innovation, the site context, and the implementation process—that might explain why particular outcomes were achieved. Then we proceed in more depth, outcome by outcome, searching for explanations for each one. The reader will encounter what feels like repetition, because the variables we have been discussing so far will be reinvoked in our search for confirmation and integration.

Letters: Concepts and Methods in Qualitative Research: A Reply to Donmoyer

Koestler, A. (1972). Ethical issues involved in influencing the mind. In The ethics of change. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Learning Systems. Land (Lock-Land), G.T. (1973). Grow or die: The unifying principle of transformation. New York: Random House. Maruyama, M. (1976). Toward cultural symbiosis. In E. Jantsch & C.H. Waddington (Eds.). Evolution and consciousness: Human systems in transition. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Metzner, R. (1980). Ten classical metaphors of self-transformation. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 12(1), 47-62. Prigogine, I. (1980). The aquarian conspiracy: Personal and social transformation in the 1980s. Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher. Russell, P. (1982). The awakening earth: Our next evolutionary leap. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Sawada, D., & Caley, M. (1985). Dissipative structures: New metaphors for becoming in education. Educational Researcher, 1-4(3), 13-19. von Bertalanffy, L. (1980). General system theory. New York: George Braziller.

The Implementation Process

Now we turn to what happened as innovations came into school contexts. First, this chapter explores the motives and attitudes centering on adoption of the innovation and describes people’s initial perceptions and assessments of the practices that they would be implementing. Then, in turn, we examine the early implementation, the assistance provided to users, and the process of later implementation.

Twelve Brief Case Histories

Here we offer brief capsule accounts of what happened at each of our sites. The aim is to provide a warm-up and an integrated account to serve as a base for the cross-site analyses that follow.

Why School Improvement Succeeds or Fails

Having examined each of the outcomes separately, noting the clusters of variables preceding and determining the levels of outcome, we are now ready for an integrated look at all six outcomes and their chief determinants. Collating this material will also help us to pull together the strands of earlier chapters. The overarching question here is whether there are general outcome patterns and, if so, whether they have the same or similar antecedents. If no clear patterns emerge, are there distinct “families” of sites, each with a specific outcome profile and the same causal trails leading there?

Transformations over Time

By way of providing an advance organizer for this section, we refer back to the conceptual flowchart (Figure 1, p. 11) that oriented our initial fieldwork. For now, our focus is on the fourth column, the “cycle of transformations.” The notion here, derived from psychological and sociological theory and highlighted in the recent Rand Corporation study of federally sponsored educational innovations (Berman & McLaughlin, 1974–1978), is that innovations enter an environment that they change and by which they are in turn altered. As we saw in the preceding chapter, users, administrators, and even program developers bend innovations to match local characteristics and constraints. The reshaping goes on throughout the implementation process and varies notably with the scale or the scope of the project, the degree of latitude given users to make changes, and the perceived results of initial use.